New technology turns waste into revenue
With 11,000 head of cattle going through their family-owned feedlot each year, manure management is a key business issue at the Lynn Cattle Company in Lucan, Ont.
Now, what was once a disposal issue is becoming a profit centre. Father-and-son partners Ralph and Philip Lynn are building an integrated anaerobic digestion facility as a pilot project right on the farm. The facility will convert biogas from manure into heat and electricity.
The facility will produce enough electricity to meet the farm’s own power needs, with surplus power available for sale. The municipality of North Middlesex will buy 2,500 megawatt-hours of electricity annually. That’s enough to power all its municipally owned property, giving credence to North Middlesex’s claim to being Canada’s first green-powered municipality.
“Once the quality of the gas is confirmed, which we expect in the spring, we’ll be able to ship power if we don’t need it here,” says Philip Lynn.
The anaerobic digestion facility, one of the first of its kind in Canada, will eliminate the need to spread manure and runoff produced by the feedlot. The success of the biogas venture will partly depend on the consistency of the manure going into the digester.
“The digester itself is like a huge stomach,” says Lynn. “It can get a little upset if it’s not getting the same thing every day. For one thing, you need to make sure there are no antibiotics going into the feed, because that would also kill the bacteria in the digester.”
The biogas plant, along with fresh approaches to animal handling, has earned Lynn Cattle Company national recognition for innovation. In November 2005, Philip and Luanne Lynn were one of two couples named as Canada’s Outstanding Young Farmers.
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